Amazing silence
This guesswork begins each time terrorists inflict tragedies ranging from killing individuals, to attacking public gatherings, mosques, churches, trains, airports, offices of the defence forces, and army, air force and naval bases. Pakistan’s establishment keeps pointing its finger on militant religious outfits, although without foreign backing this divided terrorist lot can’t do all this.
Last week, while being interviewed by an Indian TV channel, Pakistan’s former army chief General Musharraf (Retd) accused India of inciting trouble on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, and in Balochistan. He said “I think it’s very unbecoming that you are trying to take advantage of Pakistan’s internal problems that we are trying to confront, especially terrorism.”
This was a rare occasion when a Pakistani who matters, labelled India as the troublemaker not just on Pakistan’s Eastern but Western border as well. But this finger pointing too, followed weeks of turmoil on the Eastern borders where India’s Border Security Force kept targeting villages inside Pakistan, killing farmers and destroying their homes. These incidents are visible realities; pointing to India’s role therein isn’t a revelation. But over terrorist acts inside Pakistan, fingers are rarely pointed at the backers of the terrorists. Although killing and arrest of terrorists and confiscation of their weapons is disclosed regularly but countries training, arming and financing the terrorist outfits remain a mystery.
Before General Musharraf’s (Retd) revelation, in April 2009, in a long in-camera session of the Senate, Rehman Malik had revealed Indian and Russian involvement in terrorism on Pakistan’s Western borders. But a foreign office spokesman quickly clarified that Rehman’s reference to Russia was in an historic context; Russia was no longer involved in terrorism in Pakistan.
In his revelations, while Rehman admitted that terrorists had modern weapons, he didn’t disclose their origin – a gap in his disclosures because without detailed supporting evidence (that was available), pointing fingers at foreign countries could be questioned, as was pointed out by the media. Since then silence has prevailed on this sensitive subject.
For unknown reasons, Pakistan’s establishment rarely discloses the origin of the weapons being used by the terrorists. Whether this issue is taken up on the diplomatic level is anybody’s guess because nothing thereabout appears in the media. Hopefully, involvement of foreign countries with a host of warring terrorist groups isn’t being overlooked.
Not highlighting the role of foreign countries in terrorism in Pakistan is no ordinary lapse because the world doesn’t come to know which elements are making Pakistan progressively a graver security risk. We haven’t learnt any lessons from the way India has been damaging Pakistan by accusing it openly of involvement in terrorist acts in India.
BJP (and the Congress Party under BJP’s pressure) blamed Pakistan’s security agencies for using religious outfits as their proxies in attacking India’s parliament and Taj Mahal Hotel. In July 2013, a former Indian home ministry official Satish Verma made some startling disclosures before the Indian court investigating these attacks to establish responsibility there for.
According to him, these attacks were carried out by Indian secret agencies for two state-defined purposes – justify drafting of India’s anti-terror laws, and blame Pakistan, and both attacks were carried out at the behest of the BJP and Congress regimes that were in power at the time, and both regimes ‘orchestrated’ these attacks to blame Pakistan’s intelligence agencies.
Passage of the Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act followed the 2001 attack on India’s parliament, and amendments to the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act followed terrorists’ siege of Bombay’s Taj Mahal Hotel in 2008. Indian governments (vocally supported by Richard Holbrooke) used these incidents to label Pakistan the ‘epicentre’ of threat to South Asian security.
Apparently, Indian trickery wasn’t highlighted to the US defence “experts” directing the US war-on-terror, despite their marginalising of the contribution of Pakistan’s intelligence services in this “crusade”. If that’s so, it was a serious lapse because it prevented the build-up of pressure on the US (at home and abroad) for taking up this grave issue with India.
Any reasonably prudent individual can see that Taliban aren’t a religious outfit. Their defiance of every tenet of Islam in broad daylight leaves none in doubt about their being bent upon putting in place anything but an Islamic governance system; the ruthlessness with which they butcher Pakistanis proves that they are on a mission dictated by Pakistan’s enemies.
The mission of these outfits is to destabilise Pakistan to justify their foreign backers’ access to Pakistan’s nuclear assets because their foreign backers can’t accept a Muslim state’s becoming a nuclear power – an Israeli worry shabbily camouflaged in Western and Indian concerns over Pakistan’s involvement in terrorism. Is it still difficult to identify who these foreign backers are?
The sole US concern is the danger of Pakistan’s nuclear assets falling to the ‘wrong’ Taliban outfit.
How much is the US bothered about stability of an economically hard-pressed Pakistan (that has also been lethally wounded by the US war-on-terror) was reflected in President Obama’s assertion that even economic aid to Pakistan won’t be a “blank cheque”.
While Pakistan’s establishment doesn’t speak openly about camouflaged foreign intervention on Pakistan’s Western borders, commentators in the Western media keep pointing to it. With its huge unexplored natural resource reserves, Balochistan is the target of many foreign entities that also manipulate their governments for achieving their aims.
Against this backdrop, is it wise not to identify the countries that are fuelling terrorism in Pakistan? Shouldn’t they be exposed to let the world know the reality behind terrorism in Pakistan? Hasn’t Pakistan suffered enough? Don’t its administrators see the continuing slide in Pakistan’s risk rating, and consequently, in all other ratings? What does India’s increased preference for Israeli arms imply?
Pakistan’s sliding risk ratings have made it unattractive for investment – a trend that is hurting Pakistan because not enough job opportunities can be created for its bludgeoning youth population. This trend foretells tough times as more young men opt for crime as their source of livelihood. Youth are bundles of energy; which way they are forced to go depends on the state and the society at large. While the society is conscious of its obligations, and is doing what it can to slow this trend, the state isn’t doing enough; its virtual silence, instead of exposing the foreign interests that are bent upon tarnishing Pakistan’s image, is simply amazing.
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